WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:14.440 This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,893 from Wednesday, 5 July 2023. 00:14.440 --> 00:19.120 Today's show is entitled, GameCard Design Resources. 00:19.120 --> 00:22.120 It is part of the series' tabletop gaming. 00:22.120 --> 00:26.680 It is hosted by Clottu, and is about 38 minutes long. 00:26.680 --> 00:29.280 It carries a clean flag. 00:29.280 --> 00:40.800 The summary is, how design card? 00:40.800 --> 00:42.160 Hey everybody, this is Clottu. 00:42.160 --> 00:47.880 Recently a friend of mine asked me on MasterDone if I had any experience with making 00:47.880 --> 00:52.160 it, quote, game cards, like Magic of the Gathering Closed Quote. 00:52.160 --> 00:55.040 So I've made a couple of games as a hobby. 00:55.040 --> 00:58.120 I don't sell things in Mass. 00:58.120 --> 01:03.240 I've never approached a game store and asked them to carry my product or anything like 01:03.240 --> 01:04.240 that. 01:04.240 --> 01:09.040 So I'm not really the best person to comment on this kind of stuff, I guess, other than 01:09.040 --> 01:12.440 the fact that I've done this as a hobby, and I quite enjoy it. 01:12.440 --> 01:18.160 So I do have thoughts about the process of making assets for games. 01:18.160 --> 01:24.760 Now this question specifically was specified that it was going to be digital, not physical. 01:24.760 --> 01:30.720 So it doesn't need to see print, which is good, it's a thing, it's not necessarily 01:30.720 --> 01:33.280 good or bad, but it's a good qualifier. 01:33.280 --> 01:39.120 So I figured in this episode I would talk about a couple of different aspects of what 01:39.120 --> 01:43.280 one might think about if one was going to design gaming assets. 01:43.280 --> 01:50.600 And I can kind of break it down into three major categories, which is just conceptual design 01:50.600 --> 01:54.080 and resources, and I'll probably do it in that order. 01:54.160 --> 02:00.400 But before I get into those thoughts, I want to kind of preface it all with setting 02:00.400 --> 02:06.560 your own expectations or rather determining what your expectations might be. 02:06.560 --> 02:10.880 And I think, you know, if you don't stop to think about it and you think about it and 02:10.880 --> 02:14.520 you just ask yourself really quickly the question, what do I want to get out of this? 02:14.520 --> 02:21.360 Then I think the natural compulsion of most people engaging in any activity is I want it 02:21.360 --> 02:22.360 to be amazing. 02:22.600 --> 02:28.080 That's just kind of like, since we're dreaming without any constraints, let's just 02:28.080 --> 02:29.480 say it's going to be great. 02:29.480 --> 02:32.080 It's going to be the greatest thing ever. 02:32.080 --> 02:37.800 It'll be fun for me, it'll make an impact, it'll people will see it and they'll love 02:37.800 --> 02:42.040 it, they'll want to throw money at it, I'm not even selling it, they'll still give 02:42.040 --> 02:43.040 me a million dollars. 02:43.040 --> 02:46.680 It's going to be the most beautiful thing, people are going to write about it in magazines, 02:46.680 --> 02:47.680 like why not? 02:47.680 --> 02:49.440 You can have anything at this stage. 02:49.880 --> 02:52.880 In reality, of course, that's probably not going to happen. 02:52.880 --> 02:58.240 I mean, I guess it happens for somebody out there, like the lottery winner of popularity, 02:58.240 --> 03:01.240 but I mean, generally speaking, it's not going to happen, right? 03:01.240 --> 03:06.480 So we, you have to kind of set yourself or not set expectation, but really just kind 03:06.480 --> 03:12.400 of set your target, really, decide what it is exactly you are setting out to do. 03:12.400 --> 03:17.440 Now, I don't have a lot of information based on just a quick master done post, like 03:17.440 --> 03:22.720 I don't, I don't have a whole lot of background, I don't know what the real goal is. 03:22.720 --> 03:27.520 I mean, the goal is to create some cards that look like they're for games in a digital 03:27.520 --> 03:28.520 format. 03:28.520 --> 03:30.080 That's all the information that I have. 03:30.080 --> 03:35.120 I can imagine a lot of reasons someone might want to do this, might be for fun, it might 03:35.120 --> 03:40.320 be because they want to program a video game, like a card based deck building game or 03:40.320 --> 03:42.040 some game like that. 03:42.040 --> 03:45.880 So there's lots of different reasons that someone might be asking about this, but I don't 03:45.880 --> 03:48.640 know the details, and that's fine, it doesn't matter. 03:48.640 --> 03:52.120 For you, if you're thinking about, it would be fun to make a game, those are questions 03:52.120 --> 03:56.400 you'll have to ask yourself, what do you really want, why are you doing this? 03:56.400 --> 04:04.120 And more importantly, I guess, there is this famous triad of features you can expect to 04:04.120 --> 04:07.120 have when you undertake any activity. 04:07.120 --> 04:12.200 And that triad is, you can have time, you can have quality, or you can have affordability. 04:12.200 --> 04:17.880 What that means is that when you sit down to work on a project, you can have it done 04:17.880 --> 04:22.480 quickly and affordably, but you're going to sacrifice on quality because you've done things 04:22.480 --> 04:26.600 really, really fast and really, really cheap, or you could take a different tactic and 04:26.600 --> 04:31.920 sit down to do something and really optimize on quality and on affordability. 04:31.920 --> 04:35.080 But that's going to take you a long time, because you'll have to craft everything that 04:35.080 --> 04:36.880 you need yourself. 04:36.880 --> 04:37.880 And so on. 04:38.120 --> 04:44.880 You look at the triad of time, quality, money, and you pick two, but you can't have all three. 04:44.880 --> 04:49.480 It's a really good model to keep in mind for for anything, I think, practically, but 04:49.480 --> 04:54.960 I mean, certainly, anything you do as a hobby, like that, that's a really, or really work 04:54.960 --> 04:55.960 project. 04:55.960 --> 04:57.600 It's a really good thing to keep in mind. 04:57.600 --> 05:04.040 With that in mind, I will now talk about some of the core concepts when creating game assets. 05:04.040 --> 05:08.920 When you're creating a game asset, it's often because you're creating a game and 05:08.920 --> 05:15.880 interestingly, the first step in creating a game is often not creating the assets. 05:15.880 --> 05:20.320 It's creating the mechanics, and the mechanics are purely intellectual. 05:20.320 --> 05:24.240 There are things that you just make up in your head, and then you can even, I mean, you 05:24.240 --> 05:28.240 shouldn't, but you, or, well, to some degree, you can, you can just kind of run them through 05:28.240 --> 05:29.240 in your head. 05:29.240 --> 05:31.440 You don't even need the physical objects. 05:31.440 --> 05:35.640 So if you're thinking of a game, and you think, well, okay, so what if there was a game 05:35.640 --> 05:40.720 where I had a game card, and who cares what it looks like, but it has the number two on 05:40.720 --> 05:47.360 it, and then someone else has a game card, and it has the number four on it, and for 05:47.360 --> 05:52.920 whatever reason, I think I'm going to say that two beats for in this scenario, and the 05:52.920 --> 05:58.920 reason I'll do that is because I have another card in my hand that is an odd number. 05:58.920 --> 06:05.360 So odd numbers give your boost if you play them to your even numbered cards, yeah, that 06:05.360 --> 06:06.360 will work. 06:06.360 --> 06:10.000 Okay, so that's, that's the game premise, or whatever, you know, you just come up with 06:10.000 --> 06:11.000 the ideas, right? 06:11.000 --> 06:13.240 And that's just happening up here in your head. 06:13.240 --> 06:17.400 You don't have to have physical objects to represent that. 06:17.400 --> 06:21.960 At some point, you want the physical objects to help you sort of keep it all straight, 06:21.960 --> 06:26.400 to actually go through the motions, because I think if you keep it completely purely 06:26.400 --> 06:33.240 mental and intellectual exercise, you tend to skip things that happen in reality. 06:33.240 --> 06:37.280 Because it all, you're just simulating reality in your mind's eye, and so everything 06:37.280 --> 06:43.120 tends to work really well there, because you only let the things that work into that 06:43.120 --> 06:44.760 little simulated reality. 06:44.760 --> 06:50.000 So if you take it out into the real world and start testing some of your thoughts, your 06:50.000 --> 06:54.360 ideas, things tend to pop up that didn't come up in your imagination. 06:54.360 --> 07:00.160 Now, one of the easiest ways to take a game idea into the real world are with existing 07:00.160 --> 07:01.720 game assets. 07:01.720 --> 07:07.560 So for instance, if you have a card deck, like some poker cards, then you could use that 07:07.560 --> 07:13.440 to create a surprisingly complex game, and those, those cards have, if you think about 07:13.440 --> 07:15.400 it, quite a lot of data on them. 07:15.400 --> 07:20.680 I mean, they've, they've all got numbers, so you could use those to, to, to come up with 07:20.680 --> 07:26.280 just arbitrary values for, for your cards, they all have a color, either red or their 07:26.280 --> 07:27.280 black. 07:27.280 --> 07:33.360 They all have a suit, their aces or, they're not aces, diamonds, clubs, that's what I was 07:33.360 --> 07:34.360 thinking. 07:34.360 --> 07:38.920 You know, spades, spades, diamonds, clubs, and whatever the other one is, clovers, something 07:38.920 --> 07:39.920 like that. 07:39.920 --> 07:41.840 I don't know, whatever cards are, I can't think of them right now. 07:41.840 --> 07:46.840 But they all have that you have four suits of cards, and then possibly you have other 07:46.840 --> 07:47.840 things as well. 07:47.840 --> 07:49.880 And you've got certainly the face cards, right? 07:49.880 --> 07:50.880 You've got the Joker. 07:50.880 --> 07:55.200 Well, no, the, the jack, the king and the queen, plus you've got two jokers. 07:55.200 --> 07:57.560 So there's a lot, there's a little bit of variety there. 07:57.560 --> 08:03.640 You can construct a lot of game scenarios with that alone, just a normal standard 52 deck 08:03.640 --> 08:06.680 of cards that you get out of the dollar store. 08:06.680 --> 08:11.960 You can, you can get two decks of cards and combine them if you want, and then you have 08:11.960 --> 08:16.920 more, more numbers than you did before, because you have duplicates. 08:16.920 --> 08:22.040 So if, if you're finding that you need more, you just combine decks, or just scale it 08:22.040 --> 08:23.040 down. 08:23.040 --> 08:28.920 You, you want to simulate a hand where you have like a bunch of ones, some twos, and some, 08:28.920 --> 08:30.520 some other, you know, threes. 08:30.520 --> 08:35.640 Well, just, just grab those out of the deck and make a tiny little deck just for, for 08:35.640 --> 08:37.040 a specific scenario. 08:37.040 --> 08:38.680 So that's one really easy. 08:38.680 --> 08:43.600 I mean, literally you can find decks of cards usually, well, usually just around, right? 08:43.600 --> 08:49.160 If I feel like a lot of people just end up with a deck of cards on accident, if not, 08:49.160 --> 08:50.160 go to a dollar store. 08:50.160 --> 08:54.880 You'll get one for like literally a dollar or two dollars, whatever, whatever, the cheap amount 08:54.880 --> 08:57.200 of money is in the US now. 08:57.200 --> 09:01.120 Here in New Zealand, I think you could probably get a deck of cards for two bucks. 09:01.120 --> 09:06.640 So that's one resource to keep in mind, it's a thing to keep in mind, right? 09:06.640 --> 09:10.040 It is a resource, not for the final product, but for the process. 09:10.040 --> 09:16.160 Another great resource during the development process is Taro, and I don't mean, like, 09:16.160 --> 09:20.360 give yourself a Taro reading to see if you're going to be successful at game design. 09:20.360 --> 09:27.560 I just mean, like, the Taro deck itself is a really, really useful game design tool, because 09:27.560 --> 09:33.040 it is like a poker card deck playing card deck, except more of it. 09:33.040 --> 09:39.160 Taro card, I think, probably partly because of its origin in, like, spiritualism and sort 09:39.160 --> 09:41.280 of mythology, that sort of thing. 09:41.280 --> 09:46.320 A lot of the Taro decks that you'll see, I mean, honestly, every Taro deck I've ever seen, 09:46.320 --> 09:48.440 they're just really beautifully done. 09:48.440 --> 09:51.160 There's a unique art on every single card. 09:51.160 --> 09:55.440 That's like, over, I don't, I forget, it's like something like 82 cards or something 09:55.440 --> 09:57.680 in a Taro deck or something like that. 09:57.720 --> 10:03.000 As like, it's like a poker deck, but more of it, and unique art on every single one. 10:03.000 --> 10:07.320 So if you're, if you're looking to come up with mechanics with game mechanics, and you can 10:07.320 --> 10:11.840 find a great Taro decks on Etsy.com, just do a search for Taro. 10:11.840 --> 10:17.160 You'll find a bunch of different ones, and you can purchase one of them that you like. 10:17.160 --> 10:22.800 One of them that inspires you, or fits in with your sort of general style, and then you 10:22.800 --> 10:27.000 can take those cards and develop all kinds of mechanics, because now you have art on every 10:27.040 --> 10:30.760 single card, so you don't have to just limit yourself to the suits of the card. 10:30.760 --> 10:37.240 Like, oh, is this a sword or a pentacles or a cups or a coins or whatever, ones rather? 10:37.240 --> 10:43.560 Or, but you could also just say, like, well, all of these cards have men on them, 10:43.560 --> 10:44.760 and all these have women on them. 10:44.760 --> 10:49.080 So that'll be one faction, and this will be the other faction, or all of these cards 10:49.080 --> 10:53.280 have birds on them, and these have land animals. 10:53.280 --> 10:56.120 So those will be my two factions, or whatever. 10:56.200 --> 11:05.240 So because of the diversity of the art and the elements on each card, it's easy to abstract 11:05.240 --> 11:11.480 those cards as assets, and use them in the game that you're developing, that it's got a 11:11.480 --> 11:14.440 lot more data than just a poker deck. 11:14.440 --> 11:19.880 It's got a lot of interesting things that you could kind of latch onto, just temporarily, 11:19.880 --> 11:24.680 and then in addition to that, I mean, they've got the numbered cards with all the suits, 11:24.760 --> 11:30.760 the sword, dwinds, pentacles, and cups, but they also have the pentacles or coins, 11:30.760 --> 11:33.080 but they also have the major arcana, is what it's called. 11:33.080 --> 11:36.200 Those are kind of like the face cards, but there's a lot more of them. 11:36.200 --> 11:42.360 So it's things like, I don't know, wheel of fortune, and the hermit, and the fool, and, you know, 11:42.360 --> 11:49.480 the emperor, and all these sort of iconic sort of archetypes that, again, you could just use those, 11:49.480 --> 11:53.560 as either maybe that's your game, maybe that's the structure of your game, or maybe those 11:53.640 --> 11:56.840 with the hero cards, and all the other ones are support cards. 11:56.840 --> 12:03.640 You can, again, the point is it's very flexible, so you can, you can bend the terror deck into 12:03.640 --> 12:07.640 whatever you're developing, and then once you've developed everything, and it's working, and you're 12:07.640 --> 12:14.200 having fun with this game, then you can start talking to yourself about creating the assets, 12:14.200 --> 12:20.600 the cards themselves, the unique cards to your game, which brings me to the next segment, which is 12:20.680 --> 12:28.120 designed. This is the actual how to part of the exercise. I mean, if you're going to make game assets, 12:28.120 --> 12:33.800 you're going to have to touch a graphics application, and if you're not skilled at that, 12:33.800 --> 12:38.200 if you don't like literally have the skills for that, and I'm not talking about like the comfort 12:38.200 --> 12:43.800 and the talent. I'm talking about like you just, you never had to use a graphic application 12:43.800 --> 12:49.000 for anything serious, then that can be a little bit difficult. My go-to graphic application is ink 12:49.080 --> 12:53.560 scape, which is a vector-based drawing program, and that can be a little bit complex. I mean, 12:53.560 --> 12:59.720 it's surprisingly easy to learn. Like, ink scape is shockingly, and I've heard this resounding, 13:01.000 --> 13:06.840 I've heard resoundingly from like everyone I've ever met, like that they could, they eventually 13:06.840 --> 13:11.800 just figure it out in scape, so it's a really, really great application. That doesn't mean 13:11.800 --> 13:16.840 that it's quick and fast and easy to learn. It just means eventually you can learn it, so again, 13:17.480 --> 13:24.680 affordability, quality, you can do the quality and the affordability on ink scape. It will take 13:24.680 --> 13:31.720 time, you will have to spend a lot of time on that, but it is possible. There are templates for 13:31.720 --> 13:41.720 cards available from thegamecrafter.com. That's THE gamecrafter the gamecrafter.com. They are a 13:41.800 --> 13:50.440 company that specializes in producing small run games, basically print-to-order board games. 13:50.440 --> 13:54.760 I use them all the time, they're a really great company, well, I don't know how they are as a company. 13:54.760 --> 14:02.600 They offer a really great service, and one of the things that they offer because they print things 14:02.600 --> 14:08.280 on demand are templates. So if you go to, well, thegamecrafter.com and look around, you'll eventually 14:08.360 --> 14:18.280 find them, but you can go directly to s3.msonws.com slash www.thegamecrafter.com slash 14:18.280 --> 14:27.320 templates slash bridge-card.svg and there's other other kinds, there's taro-card SVG, there's poker, 14:27.320 --> 14:32.600 dash card, or maybe not poker, maybe poker and bridge use the same spec. I don't know, look around 14:32.680 --> 14:39.880 in the templates, you'll find an SVG file with just like literally the page set correctly and then 14:39.880 --> 14:49.080 little lines on the template so that you know how far it is safe for your text to go on the card. 14:49.080 --> 14:54.200 Because on cards because they cut them off of cardboard sheets and stuff, you're likely to 14:54.200 --> 14:59.000 accidentally get like the last half part of your word chopped off if you go straight up to the edge. 14:59.000 --> 15:04.680 So there are, there's a text safe zone that this template provides. Now if you're not printing, 15:04.680 --> 15:08.920 then you don't need to worry about that and you can just, you can do whatever you want. I would still, 15:08.920 --> 15:13.800 I would never say never, and even though you're telling yourself, I'm going to do a digital 15:13.800 --> 15:19.000 today, you never know, maybe it would be useful to have print safe materials. But anyway, 15:19.000 --> 15:22.920 there's a template, there's not a whole lot to it. But if you don't know ink escape, if you don't 15:22.920 --> 15:27.160 know what an SVG is or you don't want to know, then there's another option, and this is not a 15:27.160 --> 15:33.720 bad option, and I used to never recommend this option. In fact, I would recommend actively against 15:33.720 --> 15:40.200 this option. And I don't know, then I just kind of started using the thing at work, and I realized 15:40.200 --> 15:46.520 it's kind of amazing. Libre office draw. So Libre office, the open source office application 15:47.080 --> 15:54.200 has a, has the usual word processor, spreadsheet component. It's got like a presentation component, 15:54.200 --> 16:01.480 so on. But one of the things that it also has is a application called draw, DRAW, and it is a, 16:01.480 --> 16:07.800 it is an art, or a layout program, really. I wouldn't call it an art program. It's more like a 16:07.800 --> 16:15.960 graphic layout program, and you could use that to create cards with, you, the process is simple. 16:15.960 --> 16:23.320 You open up Libre office draw. You go to page, page properties, and set the size of your of the page 16:23.400 --> 16:29.640 to 57 millimeters by 89 millimeters for a bridge card. You can look up the sizes of other cards, 16:29.640 --> 16:35.800 but bridge, or I keep going back to bridge because that's, I'm pretty darn sure, that's the size 16:35.800 --> 16:42.120 of, uh, magic, the gathering. So, or it's going to be approximately that big. Uh, so 57 by 89, 16:42.120 --> 16:51.080 if 57 millimeters by 89 millimeters is the, the card size, that's 2.25 by 3.5 inches. You set your 16:51.080 --> 16:58.120 page size to that, and now you have a card. You are looking at a digital card. It is blank right now. 16:58.120 --> 17:03.720 And so then the process is to just start layering things onto it. So you go get some artwork. 17:03.720 --> 17:09.320 We'll get to that in the resources section. You go get some artwork. You import it into, you know, 17:09.320 --> 17:16.920 you insert the image onto the card, and then maybe you put a little, um, box over, over the, 17:17.000 --> 17:23.400 the image, and in the box, you put some text like the name of the card. This is a nightin shining 17:23.400 --> 17:31.240 armor. This is a space wizard. This is a princess. This is an, uh, an orc, an ogre, you know, 17:31.240 --> 17:37.240 you just label the card, and then you give it some value. So you want your orcs to hit hard, but to 17:37.240 --> 17:43.080 be less resilient, maybe, because they're not, they're not wearing armor. So you maybe give them, 17:43.720 --> 17:50.840 I don't know, four strength and, uh, two toughness. The nightin shining armor is, uh, well 17:50.840 --> 17:56.920 armored, so maybe he has a four toughness, and, uh, maybe a three strength, because he's not, he's just 17:56.920 --> 18:02.920 a human after all, uh, and so on. So you, you put in numbers. You put in names and, and, you know, 18:02.920 --> 18:08.440 all the information that you want, you write that on the card. Now if your text is sort of getting 18:08.680 --> 18:13.400 up by your artwork, then yeah, you can, you can put in some, some background colors, just put 18:13.400 --> 18:18.760 a, you know, fill the, the text box in with, with some solid color, modern design, sensibility, 18:18.760 --> 18:23.320 tends to stay away from like gradients and things like that. So I would just use a flat design, 18:23.320 --> 18:28.360 just use solid colors, some text, and some artwork. Next thing, you know, you've got a card. 18:28.360 --> 18:34.760 Okay. So that's LibreOffice Draw. You can export your, each card that you make, you make one card 18:34.760 --> 18:41.720 per page, and then you just export your entire document, uh, as a series of PNGs or JPEGs or whatever, 18:41.720 --> 18:47.720 and, or at PDF, you know, whatever you need it as, and then now you've got digital cards. 18:47.720 --> 18:53.000 You might want to design a card back as well if you're programming a game where people need to 18:53.000 --> 18:56.920 see the, the back of the card. But of course, the, the back when you're programming the back doesn't 18:56.920 --> 19:01.160 actually have to be, well, it isn't. It's not part of that same file. I mean, it could be, 19:01.160 --> 19:06.040 you could do a sprite layout or something. But I mean, the, the back doesn't have to like literally 19:06.040 --> 19:11.000 be the back of the card, right? It's just a card. It's a graphic representing the back of the card, 19:11.000 --> 19:16.040 and you put that on your deck, and then when someone quote unquote draws it, you move, you know, 19:16.040 --> 19:21.880 you, you just make a new image of the, of the face up card. So it's, it's not, it's not really 19:21.880 --> 19:27.080 literally married to that file. If you're printing, uh, the standard, you know, you're, you're 19:27.160 --> 19:31.080 going to have like all the fronts of your cards on a page, and then you're going to have another 19:31.080 --> 19:35.000 page with just the backs, and then you're going to send that to the printer, and you'll identify 19:35.000 --> 19:39.000 one as the front, one as the back, and they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll make sure that the, you know, 19:39.000 --> 19:45.800 that their printers are printing, one back on each sheet to one front on each sheet. And that's the 19:45.800 --> 19:54.920 design process. It's not really that hard. Um, I will say that one virtuous way of design thinking 19:55.000 --> 20:04.280 is minimalism. So minimalism is a powerful, powerful tool for the, um, unskilled graphic, or unskilled 20:04.280 --> 20:09.560 artist rather. I, I feel like the graphic design is one thing, but like the art is another, and 20:09.560 --> 20:14.600 and I'll, I'll talk about some sources of artwork in resources, which is the next section, 20:14.600 --> 20:20.120 but for now, let's just assume that art is hard to get, right? Like really good art that's consistent 20:20.200 --> 20:27.240 across a whole series of cards, that's, that's tough. Minimalism is your friend, and very frequently 20:27.240 --> 20:33.080 for, for lots of reason. It's minimalism is your friend, because it, it, it costs less time. 20:33.080 --> 20:37.800 It might cost upfront time to like come up with a design that you like, without looking so 20:37.800 --> 20:42.600 basic that it makes you just embarrassed, or it makes you not even think that it's a game asset, 20:42.600 --> 20:47.800 but generally, once you establish the pattern, if it is minimalism, then it's not going to take 20:47.880 --> 20:54.360 that much time. It's not going to take, you can get a high quality with minimalism, because 20:54.360 --> 20:59.160 it's minimal. There's just not that many components to worry about. So the things that you do 20:59.160 --> 21:04.840 have to create, end up being high quality, because there were only a few of them. And you can also, 21:05.640 --> 21:10.440 it's quite affordable for minimalism, because if you just issue the idea that you're going to just 21:10.440 --> 21:15.480 that you, that you could spend thousands of dollars on custom artwork, and decide I'm just going to 21:15.480 --> 21:24.360 use letters or public domain art. Suddenly, you've gotten a cheap, cheap card that looks 21:24.360 --> 21:32.760 great in some time. Okay, so minimalism is important, and like to illustrate sort of the concept here, 21:32.760 --> 21:37.240 let's assume that you've got this great idea for a game asset, and in your mind's eye, 21:37.240 --> 21:41.960 because in your mind's eye, everything is amazing and perfect and wonderful and groundbreaking. 21:41.960 --> 21:48.280 In your mind's eye, you've got this card, and there's the space wizard with laser sword on the 21:48.280 --> 21:53.720 deck of a space station, and he looks amazing, and you can just see it vividly in your mind, and 21:53.720 --> 22:00.520 there's probably some writing on there, and some iconography to indicate his physical prowess, 22:00.520 --> 22:05.160 as well as his psychic strength, all the different things that space wizards have. And you're 22:05.160 --> 22:09.880 really excited about this, and then you realize one day that you don't have any artwork of a space 22:09.960 --> 22:16.680 wizard, and even if you tried to describe what you saw to an artist, you're not sure that you 22:16.680 --> 22:21.400 would confidently know what to describe. Like how would you, how do you get the art, how do you 22:21.400 --> 22:28.280 describe it, someone get the exact same thing? So you decide, I'm going to go minimal. So instead of 22:28.280 --> 22:32.680 having a card with a space wizard, and the laser sword, and all the icons, and all these things, 22:32.680 --> 22:39.320 you decide you're going to grab a picture of a sword. You're going to give it a glow effect in 22:39.320 --> 22:44.280 Gimp. You're going to make it neon, and then you're going to put it on a black background. 22:44.280 --> 22:49.800 Now, doesn't that look snazzy? Of course it does. Black is the new black. You've got this cool 22:49.800 --> 22:54.360 look and sword that's glowing. So now, hey, it's a laser sword, even though it looks like a medieval 22:54.360 --> 23:00.200 sword from a free public domain website. There it is. It looks great. And people will look at 23:00.200 --> 23:06.120 that, and they'll think, wow, that is so stylish. Like the designer was so bold in choosing 23:06.200 --> 23:11.640 this particular sword because, because so many reasons, like obviously this is a reference to 23:11.640 --> 23:20.120 Alexander the Great's famous dream of the glowing sword that he had before he went and 23:20.120 --> 23:25.240 defeated the whoever he defeated. You know, and though it will become its own thing, 23:25.240 --> 23:31.000 whether you want it to or not. Like, minimalism, that's the power of minimalism. Well, 23:31.000 --> 23:35.960 one of the many powers of minimalism is that it inspires other people to fill in the blanks. 23:36.120 --> 23:41.880 That you couldn't be bothered to be explicit about. So you do that and that's a lot easier to 23:41.880 --> 23:47.000 design than coming up with like the space wizard art that you don't have and then finding room for 23:47.000 --> 23:52.440 all your icons and numbers and all the important data that you have that you just knew that had 23:52.440 --> 23:56.600 to be on the card somewhere. But now you've got artwork and you can't see the data. And so you 23:56.600 --> 24:00.920 know, you have to kind of move things around. Believe me, minimalism, black background, 24:00.920 --> 24:05.800 glowing sword, put a bunch of numbers down the side. You're done. Maybe grab a couple of 24:05.800 --> 24:12.760 emojis, you know, like a shield emoji and a crossed sword emoji to represent like the physical 24:12.760 --> 24:20.360 prowess and the defense and then something else like little brain wave icons like an RSS feed icon 24:20.360 --> 24:25.000 for the psychic power, you know, little little icons down the side with some numbers by them. 24:25.000 --> 24:30.680 You're done. You've just designed a card. Do that 50 other times and you've got a whole deck of cards. 24:30.760 --> 24:35.640 That are ready to go to battle or whatever. So minimalism is an important, important concept 24:35.640 --> 24:41.560 when you're home brewing your own game assets. Really embrace it, try to make it, try to get 24:41.560 --> 24:49.160 comfortable with it because it just saves so much in every respect. Okay. So new section resources. 24:49.160 --> 24:54.840 This is unfortunately the most poultry section I have. I have lots of thoughts about design and 24:55.160 --> 25:02.040 various, you know, getting started, getting started concepts. Resources, I don't have that many of 25:02.440 --> 25:07.720 at least I don't have that many that are really, really useful. So I do have some that are very useful. 25:07.720 --> 25:12.760 But I don't have as many as I would like. So first of all, if we are embracing minimalism, 25:12.760 --> 25:20.360 you may as well go embrace free SVG. Really, it is a mess of just random public domain art or 25:20.440 --> 25:25.320 public domain slash creative commons zero artwork. It is stuff that people have scanned in from 25:25.320 --> 25:30.920 1940s comics. It is stuff that people have drawn themselves in in third grade. It is this, 25:30.920 --> 25:35.880 it's all kinds of stuff and there's a lot of it. Remember, I said you could have quality, 25:35.880 --> 25:41.720 you could have affordability, but you could have time. Well, free SVG is your time sync. You will 25:41.720 --> 25:49.320 spend all of your time looking through SVG for work that is consistent enough to look like that 25:50.120 --> 25:57.160 to look like it came from the same game. And also, that's, you know, kind of high quality enough. 25:57.160 --> 26:03.560 That works with your game, I guess, is really what I mean. Because the quality is the quality. Once 26:03.560 --> 26:09.080 you find your the common thread, that's the quality you're using, right? Because you just have to 26:09.080 --> 26:13.400 make sure that the images look like they all came from the same game. So if they look one way, 26:13.400 --> 26:19.080 then that's what you got. So you grab a bunch of free SVGs from free SVG.org, download them, 26:19.160 --> 26:23.320 you put them on cards, you've got your game. That's, that's one way of doing it. Now, like I say, 26:23.320 --> 26:28.760 you're going to take a lot of time doing that. I made a game called Dark Occult, which was a 26:28.760 --> 26:36.680 re revival of an old Kenneth ramen card game from like the 80s called Dark Colts. And because 26:36.680 --> 26:42.360 the original game art was copyright and I couldn't get in touch with Kenneth ramen, I did try. 26:43.160 --> 26:48.600 I just went to free SVG and pulled a bunch of artwork. And it was all stuff that was like, yeah, 26:48.600 --> 26:54.520 literally scanned in from, you know, random sources, like mostly, like, I think comic books from 26:54.520 --> 26:59.960 the 40s and 50s, like horror comic books. Like, I can't think of any of the names all of the sudden. 26:59.960 --> 27:03.960 I literally own several of them. So I don't know why I can't think of their names anyway. They're 27:03.960 --> 27:08.360 old. They're horror comic books. And they're great. And they're super cheesy. And they're wonderful. 27:08.360 --> 27:15.000 But I managed to grab, like, some artwork that felt kind of atmospheric to me. And I put them on 27:15.000 --> 27:22.120 white cards, black ink, put the original text, or callouts to the original text on the bottom of 27:22.120 --> 27:26.760 the card. And that was it. Like, that was, I was done. I made the card game. It's done. I play it all the 27:26.760 --> 27:31.080 time. I love it. It's literally one of my favorite games. I mean, I'm not taking credit for the game 27:31.080 --> 27:35.560 design. I didn't make the game. I just, I just re-implemented the cards. And it's all from 27:35.720 --> 27:42.280 freesvg.org. That used to be openclipart.org. By the way, freesvg is sort of the successor of open 27:42.280 --> 27:49.480 clipart. Open clipart went wonky. So freesvg.org is a great resource for, you know, if you're 27:49.480 --> 27:55.720 ready to embrace minimalism. And if you have no expectation in terms of, like, the artwork that 27:55.720 --> 27:59.480 you're going to find. Like, if you're looking for something specific, you're not going to find it 27:59.480 --> 28:08.360 on freesvg. Freesvg is about diving into a pool of lots and lots of stuff and just rummaging, 28:08.360 --> 28:14.600 rummaging through it all. Okay. So that's freesvg.org. Another one, just as great, just as bad. 28:14.600 --> 28:21.720 Opengameart.org. Opengameart.org is very, very geared toward video games. And you have the same 28:21.720 --> 28:27.160 problem. It's just a bunch of random stuff made by random people for random reasons. And for 28:27.240 --> 28:33.240 whatever reason they ended up putting it at opengameart.org. For anyone to use, that's great 28:33.240 --> 28:39.160 except that you can't find anything consistent. You will find a great looking sword icon that you 28:39.160 --> 28:43.320 will, you'll think this will be perfect for my digital card game. And then you'll think all I need 28:43.320 --> 28:46.920 now is a treasure chest. That'll be easy. And you'll go and look for a treasure chest and you won't 28:46.920 --> 28:51.720 be able to find one except that one that's like eight pixels by eight pixels because someone 28:51.720 --> 29:01.800 developed it 10 years ago for a Nintendo Gameboy mod that they're doing. You won't find anything 29:01.800 --> 29:07.320 consistent. And then so you'll have to what you'll end up having to do is find all of the artwork 29:07.320 --> 29:11.880 within the realm of what you're looking for. And then you'll have to find the common thread. And that 29:11.880 --> 29:17.560 will be the look of your game. You didn't imagine your game to be a pixel art dungeon crawler. 29:17.640 --> 29:22.600 Well, now it's a pixel art dungeon crawler because that's the art you could find. It works. 29:22.600 --> 29:28.520 It's just not, you feel the compromise as you're making it. That said, it can work really well. 29:28.520 --> 29:35.320 I made a game, a little card game. And I used, I think eight different artworks from opengame.org. 29:35.320 --> 29:40.120 And it worked brilliantly. It was really nice. It had a little bit of fantasy, a little bit of sci-fi. 29:40.120 --> 29:44.920 It was just kind of one of those worlds where it was like, yeah, we got both. We got cables and computers. 29:44.920 --> 29:52.040 And we got wizards doing scroll spells. You know, it's fine. You just have to, you know, 29:52.040 --> 29:57.000 the look and feel of your game gets determined for you. And then I got two other resources that I think 29:57.000 --> 30:02.680 could, could actually be useful. Like these are, these are pretty good. Archmage is a open-source 30:02.680 --> 30:11.080 card game that is Archmage, ARC in a GE. You can find it at archmage.org. Now they, it's an amazing 30:11.160 --> 30:17.240 project. They're working really hard at making a trading card game that is open-source. So think 30:17.240 --> 30:23.400 magic of magic, the gathering, or I guess probably like, you geo or Pokemon or something like that. 30:23.400 --> 30:29.560 But, but it's open-source. It's sort of a low fantasy setting. And it's an attack, 30:29.560 --> 30:34.440 your opponent kind of card game where you build up a little army in your deck. And you figure out 30:34.440 --> 30:40.120 what attacks what and so on. So it's, it's a really, really, very cool little card game. 30:40.200 --> 30:44.040 I have two boxes of it. I ordered them and had them shipped all the way to New Zealand, 30:44.040 --> 30:49.640 which was not cheap. But I really, really wanted to support the project. And it's just a really, 30:49.640 --> 30:55.800 really, it's really cool. It is a neat project. I'm really super glad to have two card sets from it. 30:55.800 --> 31:00.200 And, you know, you look at it and you're just thinking, well, this is open-source. Like, where do 31:00.200 --> 31:05.400 it, where do they source their art? And they source their art from lots of different places. But they 31:05.480 --> 31:12.120 do it in such a way that it mostly looks consistent. And it is all open-source artwork. So you could 31:12.120 --> 31:18.920 borrow the artwork for your own game assets, archmaj.org. Some of it comes from battle for West 31:18.920 --> 31:25.800 North, the strategy video game. Others, other things, they've just obtained permission to use it 31:25.800 --> 31:31.800 under Creative Commons license. I think some is probably drawn specifically for the game. It's just, 31:31.880 --> 31:38.120 it's a lot of art assets that you could feasibly use. Go to archmaj.org slash artwork. 31:38.120 --> 31:43.880 And you'll find all of the images that they have, or you'll find a link rather to the image, 31:43.880 --> 31:49.240 that all the images that they have. And there's, you know, there's, it's a mix. It's like low 31:49.240 --> 31:55.080 fantasy. So there's some sort of things that would be suggestive of like wizardry and fairies and 31:55.080 --> 32:00.680 things like that. But there's a lot of just sort of generic medieval stuff as well. But it's 32:00.760 --> 32:06.680 mostly consistent in look. But I mean, it is a certain look, right? I mean, it, again, 32:06.680 --> 32:10.760 you're, there's a compromise being made here. You're saying, okay, well, I'm going to use art 32:10.760 --> 32:18.280 that looks like this. But I mean, that's without, without commissioning art, like that's a compromise 32:18.280 --> 32:24.520 that you're going to be making. The other resource with art pre-existing is my own game on 32:24.520 --> 32:32.440 get lab.com slash not plateau slash petition dash card game. That's petition PET, IT, IO in dash card 32:32.440 --> 32:39.000 dash game on get lab.com slash not plateau. This is a card game that I developed a couple of years ago 32:39.000 --> 32:43.720 and commissioned artwork for and then released to the art into creative commons. So, and it was all 32:43.720 --> 32:48.760 done with open source software, creta, specifically. So, it's a bunch of art. I mean, it's a bunch 32:48.840 --> 32:55.320 of medieval looking people, a couple of fantasy-ish, like there's like sort of a goblin slash, 32:55.320 --> 33:01.320 I don't know what it would really work maybe, or really a goblin. I think there's a swamp creature, 33:01.320 --> 33:05.480 you know, there's, there's like some things that are like, oh, that's fantasy. But mostly, 33:05.480 --> 33:10.520 it's, again, low fantasy, like a lot of medieval type of stuff, not very dynamic. I realized 33:10.520 --> 33:16.760 well after commissioning the art that as an art, the art ordering itself is a, is a skill 33:16.760 --> 33:22.120 and you don't really think about that. But being able to describe, again, kind of like a dynamic 33:22.120 --> 33:29.160 pose and making sure that your cards have action oriented things happening on them rather than just, 33:29.160 --> 33:34.440 just they just all look like portraits. That's, that's a skill that I didn't have at the time. 33:34.440 --> 33:41.560 So, if I ever get to order art again, then I'll be sure to be a little bit more dynamic about my art 33:41.560 --> 33:46.840 orders. Well, no, and actually, you know what? I have ordered art since then, and I did. I, 33:46.840 --> 33:51.480 I learned to my lesson. I had a lot more dynamic poses later on, but those weren't for cards. 33:51.480 --> 33:55.640 Those were for, like, books and things. So anyway, that's something that's free to use as well 33:55.640 --> 34:01.000 and creative commons, get lab.com slash, not cloud two slash petition, dash card, dash game. And those, 34:01.000 --> 34:07.000 so arcmage and petition are the kind of the two sources of like, here's a bunch of consistent art, 34:07.080 --> 34:13.560 both happen to be low fantasy. You could feasibly use them. They exist. And then after that, 34:13.560 --> 34:19.560 there's just little long shots. There's artstation.com, there's deviantart.com, 34:19.560 --> 34:27.000 both of those specialize in giving sort of a home to artists, but there's really not a huge 34:27.000 --> 34:33.000 culture of like creative commons. I mean, artstation, I think, even less. So, like, I don't even know 34:33.000 --> 34:37.560 if there are creative commons assets on there at all. That's not true. I know that there are some. 34:37.560 --> 34:44.200 Not a lot, though. deviantart.com, I feel has gotten less focused on creative commons over the years. 34:44.200 --> 34:49.000 I could be making that up. That's just my impression. There's a lot of stuff on there. And so once 34:49.000 --> 34:53.240 again, you're just going to have you, you would just be looking through a bunch of things, 34:53.240 --> 34:58.040 hoping to find something that looks vaguely similar enough to something else to think, yeah, 34:58.040 --> 35:04.600 this could come from the same game. Yeah, sure. That'll work. It's difficult. The other like obvious 35:04.600 --> 35:13.080 option, possibly, is, you know, any of the online art generation things that are happening right 35:13.080 --> 35:18.760 now, like what is mid-journey or something like that. Like, I've seen several books lately that 35:18.760 --> 35:28.840 have come out for role-playing. And they just say, right on the book, this book contains 35:28.840 --> 35:35.240 artwork generated by AI. And that's, that's their art credit. You know, and I don't know. Like, 35:35.240 --> 35:40.920 that seems like it's going to be, that's definitely a developing thing, right? I mean, like, 35:41.000 --> 35:48.520 is that a real option for what you're doing? I don't know. Like, it is something that might 35:48.520 --> 35:54.200 be an option. It may not be. And I don't think, like, I think the really good renders, I think 35:54.200 --> 35:58.360 are going to cost money. I don't think they're going to be the ones that you just type into a search 35:58.360 --> 36:03.560 engine, you know, how, how I make free art with AI. Like, I think, so I think there's going to 36:03.560 --> 36:08.040 still be a cost associated with that. And then there's, there's the whole question of, like, 36:08.040 --> 36:13.560 well, if I'm going to an AI for art, am I robbing an artist of a paycheck or something? And I don't 36:13.560 --> 36:18.760 know, are you? I mean, like, how much would you pay an artist if you weren't paying an AI? Probably, 36:18.760 --> 36:23.320 you're, you know, I don't know. You'd have to look at the cost of benefit analysis and then 36:23.320 --> 36:28.760 whether you want to support a computer or support a person. It's a, it's a big question mark. 36:28.760 --> 36:35.160 Nobody knows how this works yet. I don't think. So, I mean, people know how things work. I'm 36:35.800 --> 36:39.880 saying, I don't know that anybody's really comfortable with, like, sort of how we're all, 36:39.880 --> 36:44.840 like, what, what is this market? Like, what, what is this exactly? Where the AI isn't obviously 36:44.840 --> 36:50.040 generating art just from its own imagination, because it doesn't have an imagination to computer. 36:50.040 --> 36:55.640 So, it's, it's, it's basing it off of artwork online. How do you feel about that and so on? So, 36:55.640 --> 37:00.520 lots of big philosophical questions there. And then you have to temper those philosophical 37:00.520 --> 37:04.040 questions with, like, the reality of, like, well, look, all I want to do is make a cool, 37:04.120 --> 37:10.040 looking artwork card. Like, that's, that's my goal. Like, what, how am I going to do that? 37:10.040 --> 37:16.360 I don't know. I, I have only commissioned artists who use open source tooling and who are 37:16.360 --> 37:21.080 willing to release into creative comments. That's, that's the line that I've drawn so far, 37:21.080 --> 37:25.960 but they're hard to find. It's like, really hard to find as someone who specifically uses open source 37:25.960 --> 37:30.280 tooling and is willing to release into creative comments. Like, those are just, sometimes you can find 37:30.280 --> 37:34.680 one, not the other. Sometimes you can't find either. And then you have to pay, you know, 37:34.680 --> 37:38.600 like, and you're not making any money off of the thing, probably. It's, it's tough. It is tough. 37:38.600 --> 37:42.760 I mean, it's no, it's no tougher than it's ever been. Like, these are all questions that 37:42.760 --> 37:48.360 creators, content creators, have asked themselves since forever. It's just the specifics are a 37:48.360 --> 37:54.600 little bit different. So, I don't know. Hopefully, some of that is useful. There, it meets the brief. 37:54.600 --> 38:00.120 And the brief was, do you have thoughts about creating game assets? I did. I have provided them here. 38:00.280 --> 38:06.920 Hopefully, they were useful or insightful or informative, or made for a good half hour of listening. 38:06.920 --> 38:11.080 Why don't you record a show about something that you're interested in? Thanks for listening. 38:11.080 --> 38:11.880 Talk to you next time. 38:31.240 --> 38:38.600 HostingPrayHBR has been kindly provided by an onsthost.com, the internet archive and our 38:38.600 --> 38:44.840 synced.net. On the satellite stages, today's show is released on our creative comments. 38:44.840 --> 38:52.120 Attribution for going to international license.